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New Day
New England Patriots Win Sixth Super Bowl; Trump at 40% Approval in Latest Poll; Axios: 60% of Trump's Schedule is 'Executive Time'; Embattled Virginia Governor Refuses to Resign after Racist Photo. Aired 6-6:30a ET
Aired February 04, 2019 - 06:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We have now set the table beautifully, and everybody knows what's going on because of the shutdown.
[05:59:26] UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He's getting increasing pushback. The president has to see Tuesday as a moment to reunify Republicans behind him.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The president is dead set on keeping his campaign promise. I support border security, whatever it takes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To the end zone, and it's intercepted at the three-yard line!
TOM BRADY, QUARTERBACK, NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS: I'm so happy for my teammates. This is a dream come true for all of us.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's all about the players. These guys worked so hard all year. They played like champions.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It's Monday, February 4, 6 a.m. here in New York. Alisyn is off. Poppy Harlow joins me.
Long time, no co-anchor.
POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: I'm just glad they won so you're smiling.
BERMAN: I was thinking, you must be so psyched that you picked today --
HARLOW: I am.
BERMAN: -- to come in and sit next to me.
HARLOW: Of course.
BERMAN: Are you ready for this? They say you always remember your sixth time, and no one will ever forget the Patriots' sixth Super Bowl title. Six rings for Tom Brady to go with the crown he deserves for being king of the universe.
This is the front page of the Boston Globe today. It says, "Dynasty Rolls On." And let me just clarify: this is this morning's paper, not the one from two years ago or two years before that or 2005 or 2004. You get my point where I'm going here.
HARLOW: Endless.
BERMAN: Last night in Atlanta, the oldest coach/quarterback duo in Super Bowl history, Bill Belichick and Tom Brady, defeated the youngest, Sean McKay and Jared Goff. It was 13 to 3, Super Bowl LIII. The lowest scoring Super Bowl ever. Taking home MVP honors, Julian Edelman. He caught ten passes for 141 yards, which is nine more catches than had he in his entire college career.
HARLOW: Can I just go home now?
BERMAN: Yes.
HARLOW: I don't think I'm needed until at least half an hour into this show. I'm just going to let you take over.
I feel bad saying this, though Berman.
BERMAN: It's true. It's true.
HARLOW: This was kind of the snooze bowl.
BERMAN: It stunk.
HARLOW: It ranked a very low on the excitement scale. There was even that interesting Mercedes Benz tweet and then deleted by the stadium, which we'll get to in a little bit.
But it was historic, as Berman just laid out for you. And if you're one of the millions of Patriot haters, which I am not -- their skill is real. I am not a hater. I just wish, you know, the Vikings would do it a little bit more often.
This is the end of a dynasty. That's what you were hoping. No, you're out of luck. And by the way, Tom Brady is not going anywhere --
BERMAN: No.
HARLOW: -- anytime soon.
Let's go to Coy Wire. He is live in Atlanta with the highlight of the big game.
My friend, if folks went to sleep like I did, walk us through it. COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS: Yes, so Poppy, John, good morning to you.
There are so many ways that we can remember this Super Bowl. It's two of the highest-scoring offenses in the league, only combining for 16 points. Bill Belichick becoming the oldest coach to ever win a Super Bowl at 66. Or because John Berman will never let us forget that Tom Brady, despite not throwing a single touchdown pass, wins a sixth title.
Let's walk you through it. It did not start off well for you, did you it, John? Kind of worried here. On his very first pass attempt of the game, Tom Brady dropping back, looks right and throws it, interception.
Nothing really came from that, though. It kind of set the tone. It was a lot of defense. Great for guys like me who played defense in the NFL. Bad for people who love offense.
But late in the game, here we go. Fourth quarter, Rob Gronkowski gets the team down to the one-yard line there. And Sony Michel, he
lost the college football national championship while at Georgia a year ago on that very field; scores the only touchdown of the game.
Jared Goff late in the fourth quarter would have a chance to prove he's savage. He throws one to Brandon Cooks and the great defensively play there breaks it up and on this play, an all-out blitz by the Pats. Jared Goff proves he is not savage. He is not Tom Brady. An interception by Stephon Gilmore. And the confetti is flying. There you have it, 13-3, your final.
And would you believe those ten points is the largest margin of victory for the Patriots in any of their Super Bowl wins.
After the game, Hines caught up with Tom. Is he the GOAT now, he asked him.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HINES WARD, CNN SPORTS: What does it mean it win six, man? You're the greatest of all time.
BRADY: You know, I don't believe that. I don't believe that. I don't think about that. I just think I play with so many great guys on so many great teams, and I still get to do it. Forty-one years old, playing the sport I grew up loving and I'm proud of my team tonight.
WARD: What about Jules, man?
BRADY: He was like a little Hines Ward tonight. Wasn't he?
WARD: He balled (ph) off, man.
BRADY: He played his butt off. And I knew he was going to play his butt off. He was so focused, and we needed him big-time, and he came now.
WARD: Congrats, my brother.
BRADY: Thanks, baby.
WARD: MVP of the Super Bowl. What does that mean?
JULIAN EDELMAN, MVP OF SUPER BOWL LIII: It's pretty crazy.
WARD: Is it surreal?
EDELMAN: It's pretty surreal. I'm still, you know --
WARD: You're not going to sleep tonight. I guarantee you that.
EDELMAN: I don't know yet. I just want to say hello to my little baby girl Lily. I love you. I miss you, and I can't wait to see you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WIRE: All right. So Julian Edelman, you noted to it earlier, John. The guy wasn't recruited out of high school. He played quarterbackken at Kent State, and there he is, your Super Bowl MVP.
And that confetti you saw flying, John. I got you some from the field, so you will have that coming to you via mail there in New York. A little token for you.
We do have to talk a little bit more about the halftime show. OK? Because this was highly anticipated, as it always is. And there you see Maroon 5's Adam Levine.
And if you're a Maroon 5 fan, you would say this was great. Some say it was a little too much Maroon 5. Some called this performance trite and artless, many hoping that the band would pay a tribute or a nod, at least, to Colin Kaepernick or social activism or the take-a-knee movement. There was none of that.
[06:05:10] There was a lot of Adam Levine, though, as you see. Very little Big Boi from Outkast, Atlanta's own. He did roll out in a Cadillac at one point, paying tribute to the rich hip-hop and rap culture here in the city.
For the most part, though, many thought, like the game itself, the halftime show was a bit of a snooze fest. So there you have it, guys.
John Berman, congratulations to you yet again. I feel I have said this to you way too many times during my time here at CNN reporting on the big Super Bowl.
BERMAN: Coy, thanks very much.
Look, it was not a good game, but you know how many other teams would like to win a game that bad? All of them. All of them.
HARLOW: There you go. Have the world seen your mug?
BERMAN: No. HARLOW: Can we, please? Please?
BERMAN: Yes.
HARLOW: Because this wonderful woman in our lives, Lisa Zay (ph), right?
BERMAN: Yes.
HARLOW: Our colleague.
BERMAN: I don't know if you can push in closely enough. But the important thing to know here is there are two faces on here. I don't deserve to be on this mug, but it's me and Tom Brady put all over the mug there.
And just one last thing. I don't have a Patriots tie, but I do have a Red Sox tie.
HARLOW: Yes, because they're --
BERMAN: Because it was 85 days since they won the World Series. I'm very sensitive to the fact that I don't want to lose all of our viewers by gloating about the Patriots all day. So we should probably move on now.
HARLOW: Can I go home now? All right. But let's turn to politics. Congrats, Berman.
BERMAN: Yes, please. Thank you.
HARLOW: I'm very happy for you and all the Pats fans.
So to politics, we do have a new CNN poll this morning on how Americans people feel about the president and the prospects of whether the president and Congress can strike a deal to avert another government shutdown on February 15.
On the eve of his State of the Union address, the president's approval rating stands at 40 percent. Our political director, David Chalian, with us this morning on our new poll numbers.
I'm fascinated by this poll. His approval is slightly higher, and there's some really interesting nuggets in here.
DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Indeed. And Poppy, you know, we've seen Donald Trump operates within a very narrow band, but you're right. He's now coming back a little bit, an uptick. Take a look. He's at 40 percent now, as you said. In January, during the shutdown, 37 percent. He was at 39 percent right before the shutdown. Clearly having the shutdown over has helped him a little bit here, but it's all within a range.
Look at how he stacks up to his predecessors as they were about to give their third State of the Union address. Take a look here. Only Ronald Reagan in 1983 at this point in his presidency was below where Donald Trump is now.
Now that may give Donald Trump hope. You'll recall Ronald Reagan went on to win a resounding victory for a second term. But Trump's still near the bottom of the heap here.
As for the deadline that we're facing 11 days from now, with government funding, the country is rather pessimistic that there will be any deals. Sixty-four percent of Americans tell us in this survey by SSRS that no deal is likely between Congress and the president.
And what about the potential solutions there? Take a look at this. Thirty-nine percent only support shutting down the government again if no wall funding. Fifty-seven percent oppose another shutdown.
How about that action of a national emergency that Donald Trump has telegraphed maybe announcing in the State of the Union? Two-thirds of Americans say he should not declare a national emergency. Only 31 percent says he should.
And here's the trick. This is the box Donald Trump is in. You just saw a majority oppose another shutdown, oppose emergency action, but majorities of Republicans support them. That's the box Donald Trump's in.
And now, of course, he's going to be facing a new reality in Washington. When he takes to the House chamber tomorrow night, you'll see Nancy Pelosi above his shoulder. Fifty-one percent of Americans say that the Dems in Congress should take the country in the direction. Only 40 percent say that about Trump.
And here you see Speaker Pelosi's favorability rating is really on the rise. She was at 34 percent before the shutdown. She's now at 42 percent favorability. She hasn't had a number like that in CNN polling since 2007.
This is largely due to Democrats, specifically liberal Democrats getting more and more enthusiastic about their view of Speaker Pelosi -- John, Poppy.
BERMAN: David Chalian, great to have you here. Thanks for sharing this historic morning with us.
CHALIAN: My pleasure.
BERMAN: I know you're going to join in this conversation.
Also joining us are Margaret Talev, senior White House correspondent from Bloomberg News; and Joe Lockhart, former Clinton White House press secretary, who also worked for the NFL. I'm just putting that out there, since football is a theme this morning.
HARLOW: Why not?
BERMAN: I have to say, Joe, I'm actually fascinated. As Poppy was saying, there's a lot in this poll if you dig in deep. If you look at the president's approval rating now, which is 40 percent and look at where it was in January, which is 37 percent and also before the shutdown 39 percent, look, you know, you can say it ticked up a tiny bit. It's all within the margin of error.
But the bottom line here is this just illustrates something we have known. But this really makes it rock-solid. He's got a floor here that just is around that 37, 39 percent, and there's not anything that is going to push him below that. This shutdown was a real problem for him politically. At the same time the Mueller investigation is happening. Roger Stone. And his numbers are still stable.
[06:10:02] JOE LOCKHART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I think that highlights the box he's in. You're right. I mean there is all within the margin of error, so it says that his base is solid.
And we all say that there's not anything that he could do that would -- you know, he said, "I would walk down Fifth Avenue and murder people, and they wouldn't care."
He may have to test that if he decides to keep the government open, not declare a national emergency and abandon his wall, now, because that is a central principle of why his base supports him.
So you understand his problem, which is most of the country isn't with him. Congress is no longer really with him. They don't want to shut -- they won't shut the government down over this. He's got to make a choice. And for two years, he's never violated the principles that, you know, the base believe in. He has no good choices.
HARLOW: I don't know if he feels that pressure, Margaret, right now that he has to make this -- this choice because, yes, those numbers do show that most Americans don't want a shutdown even for a wall if they support a wall.
But as Berman just laid out, his approval number just doesn't move. I mean it just doesn't seem to impact him, like Teflon.
MARGARET TALEV, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. And part of this, you know, I think, Poppy, is the president is a good showman. He understands what makes good TV. He doesn't want to show all of his cards before the State of the Union address. He wants to keep the drama and the tension sort of high.
But I was in the cabinet room on Friday when he ended up doing one of these supposed to be a quick pool spray and ends up being, like, a half an hour news conference. And it was interesting to listen to him test different messages on whether he's going to -- whether there's going to be a shutdown, whether he's going to do the emergency, whether it's going to be neither.
He seemed to be, you know, hinting with rhetoric that was ready to pull the trigger on the national emergency, but he wouldn't quite let himself be pinned down. We saw this again in the CBS interview that actually was conducted the same day, even though it aired over the weekend.
And -- and also, he was testing the idea that he could just build a wall without doing either. Even if there wasn't a shutdown or even if he didn't declare the emergency, he was already moving ahead with the wall was another message he was working on.
So I think, you know, he's not sure: is he really going to face push back from Republicans if these threats that the Republicans would jam him up on a national emergency panned out. Would that be worth doing? I think he's trying to keep all of his options open, because he understands this political box.
BERMAN: Let's play a little bit of that interview that the president did with Margaret Brennan which aired before the Super Bowl which the Patriots won. Let's listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARGARET BRENNAN, CBS NEWS: Would you shut down the government again?
TRUMP: Well, we're going to have to see what happens on February 15. And --
BRENNAN: You're not taking it off the table?
TRUMP: Well, I don't -- I don't take anything off the table. I don't like to take things off the table. It's that alternative. It's national emergency. It's other things. And you know, there have been plenty national emergencies called.
You need a wall. And anybody that says you don't, they're just playing games.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: David, it's interesting. You know, we're talking about the options that the president has here. It really does seem to me that this is headed toward one place and one place only, which is some kind of executive action that involves an emergency of some kind.
He just doesn't seem willing to accept what Congress is going to come up with here. And everything he's doing seems to be laying the groundwork for the emergency.
CHALIAN: John, that's my read of it also, but that doesn't necessarily solve his political problem. It does seem to be a bit of an off-ramp here to avoid another shutdown which nobody, including the president, it seems to me, is at all interested in.
I mean, they felt, you know, the heat of the stove when they touched. And I think that that is clearly something that everyone is going to try to avoid.
But you have heard Republican after Republican come out and warn about this national emergency action, even if it is an off-ramp for the president sort of from the precipice here. You just saw in the polling numbers that we released, the country is opposed to it.
He -- it does, indeed, perhaps get him over the hump of February 15. It obviously would be fought out in the courts. But I don't think it's going to be a long-term victory for him.
Let's turn the page here and talk about the executive time. David Chalian, let me just get you on this quickly. Axios, exclusive reporting lays out. We have some images of it here, how the president spends his time.
Nearly 60 percent, Axios reports of his scheduled time is unstructured executive time. You see the comparisons there. The blue, obviously, is the executive time. What does he do during executive time? We know he likes to consume cable television news.
David, the White House is not happy that this is out there. But beyond the leaking part of it, what's the significance of that, David?
CHALIAN: Well, I mean, this -- this is now sort of the data, Poppy, right, that matches the reporting that we had seen previously that he does spend a ton of time in this, as you called it, unstructured time.
And not only does he -- yes, he's a big consumer of cable news, but he's also calling up aides. He's calling up various officials his cabinet when he sees a story he doesn't like or he reads something, he is trying to figure out his way forward on various things.
So it's not as if he's channel surfing, I would imagine, but we have not seen a president's schedule like this before with that much unstructured time before they go down into the Oval Office.
BERMAN: And Margaret, the other thing that this does, by having this executive time, it lets the White House slip things in there that aren't a matter of the public record. Because the schedule is --
HARLOW: Well, that's interesting.
BERMAN: -- you know, a matter of the public record later on. So we don't necessarily know what the president's doing here. Sometimes there could be meetings or phone calls or scheduled things of interest, of public interest that we never hear about.
TALEV: You know, I think that's a really good point. And we know that that's true, because the president is concerned about internal leaks; and this kind of shows why he should be, right?
But -- so he goes out of his way to keep stuff off of the triple private schedule that nobody except for five people are supposed to see so that he has maneuvering room to do stuff that some of his aides either don't want him to do, would be telling other aides about, would be telling people on the outside and might be leaking. That's part of it.
I still think, when you look at the visualization of this, it is just striking that -- and many reporters, many of us who cover him know this, that he spends so much time trying to manage the optics and kind of the narrative, rather than kind of getting nitty-gritty on the policy meetings being in the room with people who are shaping the policies. But that really is true. The president is very visual, television-
minded president. For him, the messaging and how he splits that messaging between the base and kind of his political opposition and everyone else, he's constantly thinking about everything from lighting to -- to getting one key line out into the atmosphere and repeating it. And that's, I think, how a lot of this executive time is playing out.
HARLOW: Joe, final thought on that.
LOCKHART: Yes. It's ironic. When I worked in the Clinton administration, we actually put in executive time to give the president time to, like, read and think.
When you look at it, it really is unprecedented, because we know a couple things about Donald Trump. He doesn't read. So he's not in there reading, you know, intelligence reports and policy position papers and trying to decide where to --
HARLOW: He did tell Margaret Brennan in the interview over the weekend that he read the entire IC report.
LOCKHART: Yes, well, that's 8,000 --
HARLOW: We asked him, point blank.
LOCKHART: -- 8,563 false statements. I can guarantee you, he did not read that report.
And we know from his actions, he spends a lot of time watching TV and tweeting. You know, again, it is an unprecedented presidency. It's one where it's -- he not only doesn't get into the details, he doesn't have a top-notch staff. He's got a bunch of sycophants there. He's pushed out a lot of the more professional people.
And it really does, I think, leave the rest of the world wondering, what are they up to? And the other thing is all presidents don't put things on the schedule, because they don't want them to know. There's nothing unprecedented about that.
The really big thing here is that I think he's doing nothing.
BERMAN: We don't know. Look, we don't know exactly what he's doing there. I think one thing is clear. This may work for him, but it is not a rigorous schedule. You cannot look at this and say this is a particularly rigorous schedule.
CHALIAN: Maybe that's why he just said in the interview on CBS that he loves the job so much. It's not --
BERMAN: All right. David Chalian, great to have you. Margaret, Joe, appreciate it.
Calls growing this morning for Virginia's governor to resign over the racist yearbook photo. Does his own staff support him staying in office? We have new reporting about a meeting last night. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:22:08] HARLOW: All right. Welcome back to NEW DAY.
Embattled Virginia Governor Ralph Northam will meet with his cabinet this morning, as calls for him to resign just grow louder and louder over that racist yearbook photo.
Last night he held an urgent meeting with senior -- several senior staff members of color. The source tells CNN no one in that meeting -- no one -- urged him to fight this and stay.
Let's bring in our Ryan Nobles, who's been all over this story and covers Virginia politics extensively. He joins us now.
Ryan, walk us through what you've learned about the meeting last night and then, you know, the team seems to be billing this as a -- Toluse Olorunnipa is also with us from "The Washington Post." Toluse, good morning.
But Ryan to you first and John Avlon.
I mean, I was up watching the Super Bowl.
BERMAN: I'm here, too.
HARLOW: No, I wasn't. And John Berman's here.
Just -- just walk us through if you could, Ryan, last night at the meeting and what that means for the 9 a.m. meeting this morning.
RYAN NOBLES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right, Poppy.
Let me first say that I've covered Virginia politics for more than ten years, including seven years right here in Richmond. There's never been anything like this that has rocked Virginia politics. And I've covered my fair share of gubernatorial controversies.
But this one is far beyond anything anyone has ever dealt with. And you're right. Last night's meeting was important.
We're told that the governor is assessing this situation on a minute- by-minute and day-by-day status. And part of what he's trying to figure out here is whether or not he can continue to govern effectively.
And the second he believes that he's lost that ability, that's when he'll make the decision to resign. And that was part what that meeting was last night.
It was essentially a fact-finding mission to find out if the people under his charge, the people that he's appointed and should be the closest to him, no longer have his confidence and believe that he should step down. And you're right. While there wasn't necessarily this groundswell of
support for him to stick it out, there was also not a mass exodus. You know, we've not seen any resignations from some of these key folks that work under the governor.
And that's why this morning's staff meeting and cabinet meeting that at 9 a.m. this morning is going to be so important. That's where the governor's going to get a real sense of where the people that work for him stand and how long this can go on.
But Poppy, I want to make it clear here that the governor's desire is to stay in office. He firmly believes that he is not one of the two people in this racist photo. He believes that he's not responsible for it. And he wants the time and space to make that case to the folks here in Virginia's government.
However, there are very few political leaders that seem to have the tolerance to put one that. That's why today is going to be so crucial.
BERMAN: The governor wants to stay in office, but it may be this morning that he is the only one, along with his wife, who wants that.
Again, because the reporting out of that meeting is there wasn't a person in there who said, "Stick this out. We're going to circle the wagons around you."
HARLOW: Right.
BERMAN: And part of the issue is the original offense, the racist photo in his yearbook page, whether he was in it or not, his handling of it also, though, Toluse, is just raising so many questions about Democrats. Where at first he said it was him. He apologized. And the next day, he said it wasn't him. But he did wear black face as Michael Jackson.
People saw this statement, what he said about Michael Jackson, and they're just scratching their heads. Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. RALPH NORTHAM (D), VIRGINIA: I had the shoes. I had a glove, and I used just a little bit of shoe polish to put under my -- or on my cheeks, and the reason I used a very little bit if because I don't know if anybody's ever tried that, but you cannot get shoe polish off.
But it was a -- it was a dance contest. I had always liked Michael Jackson. I actually won the contest, because I had learned how to do the moon walk.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you still able to moonwalk?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Inappropriate circumstances.
NORTHAM: My wife says inappropriate circumstances.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: Listen to your wife, Governor, because that's a what not to do in crisis management blueprint, Toluse, along with just, again, the aspect of the overt racism in that photo.
TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, "WASHINGTON POST": Yes. This is a case of too much information, where less probably would have been more in terms of the description of the black-face incident in the Michael Jackson incident where he's talking about using shoe polish and winning the dance contest. This is just, you know, not very -- doesn't really make sense, given the gravity of the circumstances and the gravity of the number of people asking him to resign. It made a lot of Democrats feel like the governor wasn't aware of how serious a situation this is.
Now it does appear that he's trying to dig in and see if he can ride this out. He is a man without a party at that point. The party faithful within the Democratic Party have all left him en masse, basically, and have called for his resignation. There were several people calling for his lieutenant governor to start making preparations to be the next governor of Virginia.
But if he does decide to stick this out and just fight and keep doing this until -- until maybe this blows over, it would be difficult, I think, for Democrats to push him out of office. The impeachment route is a very -- there's a high bar for that; and it would be difficult for Republicans and Democrats, because it would have to be a bipartisan effort to say that this is malfeasance in office.
And I think that may be what he's relying on at this point, the fact that it's his decision and his decision alone whether or not to stay in office.
HARLOW: Unless he lied. I mean, unless it's proven that he lied that it wasn't him in the photo. I don't know.
JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes.
HARLOW: Toluse says, John, he's a man without a party. But does he hurt the party if he stays in office, and how much?
AVLON: Well, I think it blurs the lines that Democrats have been trying create between themselves and the Republican Party. And their response has been to go in hard and say, "Look, he should resign."
There's no prevaricating on this. We're going to apply the exact same standards we would if this were found out to be a Republican. That's, of course, entirely appropriate. That's the way politics should be run when usually it's the situational ethics we see.
But, you know, this story is so surreal, not only because the history of this. And people can create a lot of flexibility for mistakes people make as a young person and this -- and the way they live their lives as an adult. But this is so stark. This is not just black face but the KKK on a 24-year-old medical student's page. And then he compounds it with this -- one of the worst press conferences in modern American political history, showing an absence of judgment. So it's no wonder that everyone -- and I mean almost literally everyone in the Democratic Party -- is telling him to get off the stage and have his lieutenant governor, who's African- American, take over.
BERMAN: But to the point you made in the beginning, I think it's interesting. Which is Democrats now have taken a sort of zero tolerance policy. Al Franken felt that before.
AVLON: Yes.
BERMAN: And now this, where all the Democratic presidential candidates are saying get out. How important is it for them to maintain this? In order for them to do what they want to do against President Trump in 2020, how much do they have to go on this?
AVLON: This is comparably clean and clear-cut compared to what happened to Al Franken. I think they've made a decision. It's the right decision. They need to stick with it. They need to draw that contrast very clearly.
Look, neither party has a monopoly on the virtue of advice. What you can do is change the way you deal with it and be -- and not simply try to defend, quote unquote, your guy because he's got, you know, an "R" after his name or a "D" after his name.
HARLOW: Toluse, to you. Where do you think this goes, and how critical are the next 24 hours?
OLORUNNIPA: Yes. This is going to be a critical period for the governor to make a very tough decision about whether or not he wants to be defined by this issue or he wants to drag down his party in sort of a long, drawn-out fight over this issue.
This is something that could define much of the party for the year if this continues on and if this fight continues on and if he sees resignations, if he sees calls for his impeachment. So he has to really make a decision about whether or not he wants to be a part of that, whether or not he wants to try to fight this and restore some of his legacy by fighting for, maybe criminal justice issues or civil rights issues in the governor's mansion over the next few years. That's something that he's going to have to decide.
And if we do start to see resignations, if we do start to see maybe other people in the Democratic Party -- President Obama hasn't spoken out yet. His lieutenant-governor so far hasn't called for his resignation.
